The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,50

a rat when we was children, and I didn’t feel I’d growed so very much bigger since. But it was a tight fit, and my feet scuffled on the stones a little as I pushed to get through. Then when I come down inside I landed badly and fell over on my back, knocking down a broom that was standing against the wall.

My heart was climbing up my throat with both hands as I crouched there, listening. This was the top level of the Underhold. Right over my head was the Hold its own self, where Ramparts was sleeping now and everything was still as stone. Someone must of heard me, I thought, for the noise had been so shocking loud in my ears.

But no one come, and by and by I picked myself up off the floor. My skin was still tingling with fear, and if anyone had touched me I would of run up the wall onto the ceiling and kept on going. But since they didn’t, I went down the stairs, feeling my way in the dark.

I could of brung a candle and a tinder-box with me, but I was scared the shining would be seen out of the window, or maybe even through the boards in the ceiling if anyone was still awake in the house up above me. In any case, I knowed my way by feel. I had played a thousand games of blind man’s touch down here, and all them games was in my feet and in my fingers.

I went down past two levels of stores, and then I come at last to that door I hid behind five Summers past – the door that was two doors, one behind the other. I drawed back the bolt on the outside door, and I found the handle on the inside one. It didn’t give when I turned it, being locked.

I took out the key I brung with me, my ma’s workshop key, feeling all over the lock plate with my other hand until I found the keyhole. I tried the key, and it slid right in. When I turned it, I felt the wards turning with it, and I heard the click as they give.

I breathed out a big breath right then, that was like a sigh. I hadn’t knowed for sure it would work; I only hoped. The first time I seen the lock, I reckoned it to be the exact twin of the lock on Jemiu’s workshop door. It was my da who made both after all, and put them there. I was thinking he might of used the same key for both plates, rather than cast another while he was here. Catrin would of skinned him if she found him out, but like I said he didn’t stay but a single night. It seemed like a good bet he never told the woman that was paying his hire that he put in a second lock for the woman who tumbled him.

There was nothing but pitch dark on the other side of the door. I stepped forward, my hands held out in front of me, going an inch at a time in case I tripped. I touched nothing for a long way, then suddenly my fingers was stroking cold metal. I slid them over the shape of it and found a row of shelves about an arm’s length deep and maybe twice as wide. The shelves was filled with stuff of every size and shape.

All my guesses was working out, one after another. This was the tech that never yet worked for anyone, or else had stopped working long before. The tech that only come up above the ground once a year on testing day.

I run my fingers over all the things that was there, feeling the strange shapes and the strange smoothness of their surfaces. The men and women who made these things was dead and buried long years before I was ever born. I felt, just for a second or so, that I was buried with them, and when I reached around to find the door it would be gone because this was a grave instead of a room. I had to go back and make sure the door was open, and I took the key out of the lock so nobody could shut me in.

It was around about then I had a thought that might of done some good if I had it an hour before. I should of